Mosharraf Zaidi

There is one aspect of the threat of non-state actors like Daesh (or Isil, or Isis) that terrifies the imagination above all others. To beat the modern state, Daesh does not need to beat the modern state at being a modern state. Everybody…

Greece is going through a very rough time. After years of enjoying the low fiscal cost, high welfare quality lifestyle, the Greek state has had to endure something known as austerity. Of course, austerity is not endured by states because,…

Take a look at any of the major storylines from the past week, and you’ll notice that they all boil down, essentially, to one thing: government not being able to govern. Let’s take the case of the Rangers’ versus the Sindh government. How…

Sometimes not saying anything is a sign of greater strength and grace than stating the obvious. When I hear my country’s interior minister boldly proclaim that, “Pakistan is not Myanmar”, I worry that we are investing too much in stating…

A fair number of us are very upbeat about the fact that a local government election was held in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Say what you will about the PTI, and I have said some pretty harsh (and I believe, true) things about it – the party…

As an old friend of Declan Walsh, I’m proud of his superb reporting of the Axact story. By all measures, it is a hell of a story. Like Jane Perlez, another New York Times reporter that true patriots didn’t like very much, Declan has…

On Thursday, April 16, a Lahore High Court bench headed by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah ordered the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) to suspend all work on the 7.5 kilometre signal-free corridor on Jail Road that is part of the overarching…

Pakistanis have become so accustomed to walks of shame that we surprise even our closest and dearest friends when we walk away, instead of getting in the wrong bed at the wrong time. The GCC military operation in Yemen is the wrong bed at…

Transformational national moments are not like loaves of bread or blades of grass. They are not easy to find, they are not readily available. That is why we yearn for them, long for them, ache for them. That is why reasonable grown men and…

Of all the things that drives reasonable, patriotic Pakistanis up the wall with frustration, perhaps none is so potent as the seemingly complete lack of the Pakistani republic’s will to react. It doesn’t really matter who comes along, winds…